As the directions to dancing to Bounce music go, “Throw on a pair of shorty shorts (yes, ladies and gentlemen alike), arch your back and get on the balls of your feet, then grab something to lean on (a wall, ankles, etc.) and shake what your mama gave you!”

“Bounce” music is a hip-hop hybrid that has been around for about 20 years, and nobody delivers the goods quite like the undisputed “Queen Diva” of Bounce music, Big Freedia. Basically, it’s rap delivered over a sampled dance beat like Big Freedia’s Rock Around the Clock which begins with a sample from the Bill Haley classic.

Make no mistake, bounce is strictly party music. But it isn’t misogynistic, which helps explain its huge popularity among women.

“Bounce music is not just connected to gay audiences because it’s been around for years before I started, and performed mostly by straight entertainers,” Big Freedia – stage name of Freddie Ross – told me when she was last in Montreal, headlining Club Soda back in August 2011.

Big Freedia has already achieved mainstream success in her hometown of New Orleans with such hit singles such as Gin in My System and her anthemic Azz Everywhere! That success also has a lot to do with the fact that Freedia performs roughly 600 shows (yes, you read right) per year, often at several venues per night where she’ll usually perform a five or six-song set at each.

“I work six nights a week back in New Orleans and when I’m on the road, I’ll often do four or five venues in one night,” Freedia says. “I’m just working hard to get my name out there.”

That positive spin on life is also one of the infectious grooves at the root of Big Freedia’s roof-raising interpretation of bounce music.

“I’m a big black guy and my mission is take this music around the world,” says Big Freedia. “I’m very protective of this music and its legacy. People everywhere are dancing to bounce music now. There is a time and season for everything, and it’s the time for bounce music.”